Georgia Bullies Made Uf's Last Visit Painful

GEOFF CALKINS - COMMENTARY

October 28, 1995|GEOFF CALKINS

ATHENS, Ga. - — Look out for the right cross.

This is the best advice we can give the Florida Gators as they arrive here to play the Georgia Bulldogs. The advice comes straight from Welcome Shearer - a name, not a greeting - who as far as we can tell is the last living member of a Florida football team to play Georgia in Athens.

The year was 1932. Georgia won 33-12. Florida fans immediately fell into a great depression which, come to think of it, fit the general mood of the country at the time.

"It was a horrible nightmare and I've got a broken jaw to prove it," Shearer said. "Georgia was the dirtiest team we ever played."

Shearer lives in Jacksonville. He is 82. But he has not forgotten what happened way back when.

"A Georgia fella, early in the game, he just took his fist and broke my jaw," said Shearer, a tackle. "I'm not going to name him."

OK, we will. Graham Batchelor. Big guy. Something of a bully. He also happened to be the future intercollegiate boxing champion, which explains a lot about that right cross.

"It was right out of the blue," Shearer said. "He cracked me good."

Win one for Welcome?

All this could serve as inspiration for the Gators. The reconstruction of Jacksonville Municipal Stadium has sent Florida to Athens for the first time in 63 years. Batchelor is deceased. But Shearer, his one-time victim, will be watching on TV. ...

"Aw, forget it," Shearer said. "We should beat that team by three or four touchdowns."

This is the problem with the current state of the Florida-Georgia series. Shearer put his finger on it. How can you get you get all worked up about Georgia when Florida is favored by 24 points?

Once this was the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. Now it's the World's Largest Overblown Rivalry.

Georgia hasn't defeated Florida since 1989. Florida coach Steve Spurrier is 5-0 against Georgia coach Ray Goff. This year's Georgia team has been through three starting quarterbacks, six starting tailbacks and has scored just two touchdowns in the last nine quarters.

The Gators can score two touchdowns in nine seconds.

No wonder Spurrier decided he didn't need to bring his team to Georgia early Friday to check out Sanford Stadium. The Gators worked out in Gainesville instead.

"I don't think that's as big a deal as some coaches make it out to be," Spurrier said. "I think the field's still 100 yards over there, right?''

Just ask Welcome

Welcome Shearer is one Florida man who can confirm this. He has lined up between the hedges. Of course, they weren't exactly hedges back then, having been planted just three years earlier.

"They were more like cuttings, really," says Roy Gatchell, Georgia's football archivist. "They were planted in 1929. We have some pictures of them at the time and they were very, very small."

Shearer played in three Florida-Georgia games. Florida was shut out in two and lost them all. But the first, the most bitter, came in 1932 when Graham Batchelor broke Shearer's jaw.

"I don't remember a lot about it except for that," Shearer said. "We didn't know that would be the last game in Georgia at the time. We thought we'd have a chance to get them back in two years."

Two years, 63 years, whatever. The hedges now stand 4 feet tall. Shearer is a retired high school principal, a golfer, a Gator fan. He has a granddaughter named Welcome, too.

"It's been a long time," Shearer said. "Long enough that I expect this time we'll win."